Following a familiar path to what seemed would be a familiar kind of loss, the Padres’ dormant offense woke up on Sunday.
Suddenly, it all looked familiar in a different way, as the Padres scored four runs in the seventh inning to come back and beat the Pirates 6-4.
“Stringing up some good at-bats, making those guys pitch and come to us,” Manny Machado said. “Kind of like our old selves.”
Just as they had done so often over the season’s first five weeks, the Padres constructed a big inning by manufacturing runs. They overcame a multi-run deficit. They won a game that was in question late.
After making 12 straight outs in the middle of the game while letting a 4-1 deficit linger, the Padres scored one run in the sixth and then sent 10 batters to the plate in the seventh.
“The quality of at-bats in the seventh was unbelievable,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said.
The parade began with Xander Bogaerts’ lead-off walk and Jose Iglesias’ one-out walk. Then came an RBI single by pinch-hitter Elias Díaz and another walk, by Fernando Tatis Jr., to load the bases for Luis Arraez, who drove in Iglesias to tie the game before a sacrifice fly by Machado gave the Padres the lead for the second time. A walk by Jackson Merrill loaded the bases again before Tyler Wade lined a single off pitcher Caleb Ferguson to bring in Tatis for the game’s final run.
“It just kind of validates what our what our identity is,” Wade said. “Got a bunch of dogs in this room, and we’ve got a lot of veterans. We’ve got a lot of good ballplayers in this room. I think that inning, it showed the trust in the guy behind everybody.”
The seven baserunners the Padres had in the seventh inning were two more than they had in a 5-0 loss Saturday. Their eight hits Sunday were three more than they had in the previous two games combined.
Sunday was the Padres’ seventh time overcoming a deficit of two or more runs. It was their 12th victory secured after trailing or being tied in the seventh inning or later.
And despite their offensive woes of late — they hit .203 and scored one or zero runs seven times over the 14 games leading up to Sunday — the Padres have won three consecutive series.
“Obviously, everything isn’t clicking on all cylinders,” Jake Cronenworth said. “But to still win three series in a in a row when it’s not, that’s awesome.”
Where the ending looked a lot like April, the middle of the game seemed to continue the Padres’ late-May offensive skid.
Machado began the scoring with a home run off the ribbon scoreboard fronting the second deck of seats beyond left field in the first inning.
But a walk by Oneil Cruz and Andrew McCutchen’s second home run in two days flipped the lead in the third inning, and the Pirates added a run that inning on a double and single. Padres starter Randy Vásquez, who would last just 3⅓ innings, escaped that inning when Ke’Bryan Hayes rounded first base too far after his RBI single and was thrown out trying to get back to the bag.
It was on Adam Frazier’s home run leading off the fourth inning, which put the Pirates up 4-1, that Gavin Sheets was injured.
Sheets reached up at the last instant while running into the wall with his left shoulder, followed quickly by his face.
As the ball bounced off the top of the wall and into the seats, Sheets fell to the warning track and laid there for several minutes before walking off the field accompanied by Shildt and athletic trainers Mark Rogow and Ben Fraser.
Some smiles were cracked as the group departed. Sheets’ arm and body had left an indentation in the wall.
Sheets, who was said to have a head bruise and also have banged up his hip, wrist and thumb, traveled to San Francisco with the Padres on Sunday evening.
Brandon Lockridge took over in left field. Wade replaced him as a pinch-hitter in the sixth inning.
The sixth is when the Padres stopped a streak of futility against Pirates starter Andrew Heaney, as Arraez led off with a double and scored on Merrill’s second two-out double of the game.
Relievers Wandy Peralta, David Morgan and Adrián Morejón got the Padres through the seventh before Jason Adam came on after they took the lead. He continued the scoreless work in the eighth, and Robert Suarez did the same in the ninth to earn his 19th save, most in the major leagues.
“The bullpen did a tremendous job coming back there and keeping the game close for us,” Machado said. “And we went out out there and had some good at bats.”
